Abstract:

During previous academic years, professors of the “Materials” subject observed that student’s grades were lower during the second semester than the first semester, even with the same undergraduates and professor.

For this reason, the teachers implicates have done two studies about results from “Materials I” given in the second semester and “Fundamentals of Materials”, training in the first semester. Previous results were published in Edulearn2014 Congress.

“Materials I” is one of the most important subject matter from the Technical Architecture career. It is included in the Technique and Technology of Edification unit, and it is trained during the first semester of the first academic year with obligatory nature and with 6 ECTS credits.

For students, “Materials I” is the second contact with construction materials discipline, after “Fundamentals of Materials”, where they should develop specific skills from building industry.

To make an adequate assessment it has been provided a set of activities, the same as in the course Fundamentals of Building Materials, each one with different weighting in the final grade as follows:
- Theoretical Exam, where theoretical content is checked, with weighting of 40% from final score.
- Problem Exam, where students should solve practical problems using the acquired knowledge in theoretical classes, with weighting of 25% from total mark.
- Oral Exam about Laboratory Practices, with weighting of 15% from total score.
- Evaluation of Personal work in classes, with weighting of 10% from total mark.
- Evaluation of Personal work outside of classes, with weighting of 10% from total score.

Conditions to consider student has achieved all requirements are as follows:
a) Theoretical Exam, Problem Exam and Laboratory Exam are overcome if grade achieved by the student is equal or greater than 4.5 points. Test can be recovered in a second call.
b) Students must deliver a Practises notebook. Practical Exam value is 60%, practical notebook evaluation is 40%. Final grade is the sum of the partial grades obtained in each part, considering the subject overcome if this result is greater than or equal to five points over ten.
c) Evaluation of Personal works should be done before the Exam. Result will be saved until second call.
d) Student overcomes the subject matter when final grade is greater than or equal to five points over ten.

To sum up, this article analyzes the global result for first and second assessment, and the overall result.

In addition, to analyze both the individual and group student’s evolution, results from each separated test are analyzed. In a similar way, the research carried out studies the different areas and contents, each type of practical problems and personal activities.

Reading this work, in addition to the previous one about “Fundamentals of Materials”, it is possible to show an overview about student achievement in Construction Material discipline from first year of Graduate in Technical Architecture, which allows us to establish teaching strategies with the intention to improve the student’s knowledge.

Keywords:

Academic performance, Teaching strategies, Assessment of Knowledge.